Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell [8]
Controlling desire, however, is more problematic. Hitler was known for some unconventional sexual tastes. Heaven knows what Stalin was into. Even fascists have needs, which, at least so they dream, the enjoyment of limitless power will allow them to indulge. So although they may be willing to attack the psychosexual profiles of those who threaten them, there may at least be some moment of hesitation before they do. Of course when all the machinery of enforcement is assigned to computers, which do not, at least as presently designed, experience desire in any form that we would find appealing, why then it will be another story. But in 1984 that hasn’t happened yet. Because desire in itself cannot always be easily co-opted, the Party has no choice but to adopt, as an ultimate goal, the abolition of the orgasm.
The point that sexual desire, taken on its own terms, is inherently subversive is pursued here by way of Julia, with her cheerfully lustful approach to life. If this were really only a political essay disguised as a novel, Julia would most likely have been obliged to symbolize something – the Pleasure Principle or Middle-class Common Sense or something. But because this is a novel first of all, her character is not necessarily under Orwell’s firm control. Novelists may wish to indulge the worst kinds of totalitarian whims directed against the freedom of their characters. But often as not, they scheme in vain, for characters always manage to evade one’s all-seeing eye long enough to think thoughts and utter dialogue one could never have come up with if plot were all there were. It is one of the many joys of reading this book that we can watch Julia turn from a tough-cookie seductress into a loving young woman, as it is one of the chief sadnesses when her love is dismantled and destroyed.
The Winston–Julia story, in other hands, might have degenerated into the usual love’s-young-dream sort of rubbish – just like something a Ministry of Truth novel-writing machine would produce. Julia, who works in the Fiction Department after all, presumably knows the difference between rubbish and reality, and it is through her that the love story in Nineteen Eighty-Four is able to keep its grown-up real-world edge, though at first glance it seems to be following the familiar formula of boy dislikes girl, boy and girl meet cute, first thing you know boy and girl are in love, then they get separated, finally they get back together. This is what transpires … sort of. But there’s no happy ending. The scene towards the end where Winston and Julia meet again, after the Ministry of Love has forced each to betray the other, is as disheartening as any in fiction. And the worst of it is, we understand. Beyond pity and terror, we are not really surprised, any more than Winston Smith himself, at how things have turned out. From the moment he opens his illegal blank book and begins to write, he carries his doom with him, consciously guilty of crimethink and only waiting for the authorities to catch up. Julia’s unexpected arrival in his life will never be quite miraculous enough for him to believe in a different outcome. At the moment of maximum well-being, standing at the courtyard window, gazing into endless expanses of sudden revelation, the most hopeful thing he can think of to say to her is, ‘We are the dead’, an assessment the Thought Police are only too happy to echo a second later.
Winston’s fate is no surprise, but the one we find ourselves worrying about is Julia. She has believed up till the last minute that she can somehow beat the regime, that her good-humoured anarchism will be proof against anything they can throw at her. ‘Don’t be too downhearted,’ she tells Winston, ‘I’m rather good at staying alive.’ She understands the difference between confession and betrayal. ‘They can make you say anything – anything – but they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you.’ The poor kid. You want to grab her and shake her. Because that is just what they do